Your entity, trust and ownership structure decides three things: how much tax you pay, how well your personal assets are protected, and how wealth passes to the next generation. Getting it wrong is expensive to undo.
Book a Structuring ReviewTax structuring is the design of the legal and ownership architecture your business, your assets and your family sit inside. It comes down to three things: how much tax you pay, how well your personal assets are protected, and how wealth passes to the next generation. Every entity choice, every trust deed, every shareholding decision has a consequence in all three, usually all at once.
Most owners inherit their structure from whoever set them up on day one, usually a Pty Ltd because it was quick and cheap, sometimes a family trust bolted on later when someone mentioned income splitting. That structure fitted the business you had then. The business you have now is bigger, more valuable, and carries risks the original design never contemplated. Structuring work is the deliberate redesign, done properly, with the tax-rollover reliefs the ATO actually gives you, so the change itself is not a taxable event.
A well-designed structure works like a firewall. Limited liability sits between the business and the family's personal assets. Separate entities sit between the active trading business and the passive investments (the property, the intellectual property, the retained cash), so a claim on one doesn't reach the others. It also gives access to the corporate tax rate: 25% or 30% for companies against 47% at the top personal rate, roughly 17 to 22 cents on every retained dollar. And it carries the business, and the wealth it builds, into the next generation: a family trust with the right appointor and beneficiary set-up can pass control and income to children and grandchildren without triggering CGT or estate contests. Done well, the structure sits underneath the business and quietly does its job for 20 years.
We draw your current structure end to end: every entity, every shareholder, every trust, every loan account, every asset. Half the value of the exercise is that most owners have never seen the full diagram on one page.
Against three lenses: tax efficiency, asset protection, and sale/succession readiness. We flag what’s working, what’s exposing you, and what’s costing you tax you don’t need to pay.
The structure the business should be sitting in given where it is now and where it’s going in the next 5–10 years. Not the textbook answer, the answer that fits your family, your industry, your risk profile and your exit plans.
The tax cost, stamp duty exposure, Division 7A implications and rollover-relief eligibility of getting from A to B. Some restructures are effectively free using Subdivision 328-G or 122-A rollovers. Some cost real tax. You see the number before you commit.
Entity setup, trust deeds, share transfers, restructure documentation, ASIC and ATO registrations, Division 7A loan agreements, the whole build. Coordinated with your lawyer where legal drafting is required.
Structure is not a one-off. Trust distributions each year, Division 7A minimum repayments, corporate secretarial, annual review of whether the structure still fits. This is where the structuring work becomes part of your annual compliance rhythm rather than a document that ages in a drawer.
The choices you make in year one are the cheapest to make and the most expensive to reverse. Pty Ltd, sole trader, partnership, trust. The right answer depends on what the business becomes, not what it looks like today.
Once profit exceeds what you need to live on, the structure that was fine for a small business starts costing real money. This is the point at which a bucket company, a discretionary trust or a re-designed group typically pays for itself many times over.
Bringing in a co-owner, a key employee on equity, or an external investor almost always requires a structure the original setup didn’t anticipate (a holding entity, a shareholder agreement, sometimes an ESOP-ready share class).
Property inside the trading entity is exposed to every risk the business runs. Property in the wrong entity triggers CGT and stamp duty when you eventually want to move it. Structure the ownership before you sign.
The 12–36 months before a sale is when structure pays or costs the most. The small-business CGT concessions, the sale-of-shares-vs-assets question, the pre-sale dividend and franking-credit position, all of it depends on the structure you’re sitting in when the buyer arrives.
A new child, a marriage, a divorce, a death, an intergenerational transfer. Every one of these events tests whether the structure still fits. Most don’t, because they were built for a family that no longer exists in that shape.
Every structuring engagement is scoped and quoted upfront. No hourly billing, no surprises. A short review-and-recommendation engagement for a small group sits at one end. A full diagnose-design-and-implement for a mid-sized group with multiple entities and legal drafting sits at the other. We give you the number before you commit, not after the invoice.
For clients on a Virtual CFO or Tax Planning retainer, the structuring work is scoped separately as a project and quoted at the start. The ongoing maintenance (annual trust resolutions, Division 7A tracking, corporate secretarial) sits inside the annual compliance fee.
Book a structuring reviewMost Australian business structures are built from the same handful of components. The skill is not knowing what they are. It’s knowing which combination fits your specific business, family and stage.
The workhorse combination for most Australian businesses. A Pty Ltd operating company gives limited liability and the 25%–30% corporate tax rate. A discretionary family trust owns the shares, so if the business is ever sued, the shares aren't in a founder's personal name. Owned individually, the Pty Ltd solves tax but leaves the shares exposed. Owned by a trust, both the liability firewall and the asset-protection layer are in place.
The most flexible structure in the Australian tax system. Distributes income to beneficiaries who need it, in the amounts that make sense that year. Trustee resolution required in writing by 30 June every year.
Fixed entitlements to income and capital in defined proportions. The right vehicle when you have multiple unrelated owners who each need their own share, and for property held jointly with other parties.
A company that sits under the family trust and receives distributions taxed at 25% or 30%, capping the family’s marginal tax rate on retained profits. Then loans money back into the group under Division 7A rules. One of the highest-value structures we build.
Self-managed super fund. The right home for genuinely long-term retirement wealth. For commercial property, an SMSF with a limited-recourse borrowing arrangement lets the fund buy the premises and rent them back to the trading business. Rent taxed at 15% in accumulation, 0% in pension phase, and the property is walled off from trading risk. Complex to run properly; expensive to run badly.
Simple, transparent, useful for professional service firms with equity partners and for property held between two individuals. Not right for most trading businesses because it offers no liability protection.
A parent Pty Ltd that owns the operating subsidiary, sometimes multiple operating subsidiaries. The right structure for businesses with multiple business units, for ESOP-ready groups, and for anything you want to be able to sell in pieces.
A separate entity that holds the intellectual property, the brand, the goodwill or the equipment, and licences it to the trading company for a market-rate fee. Isolates the most valuable assets from operational risk, and creates a clean vehicle to sell or transfer the IP independently of the trading business.
Illustrative composite. Numbers are indicative of the kind of outcome this structure produces; not a specific client.
The before: Jack started as an owner-operator truck driver, sole trader, ABN in his own name, one truck. Business grew fast, profits taxed at his top marginal rate. He and his wife Diane owned their home jointly. If something went wrong at the business, the trucks, the goodwill and the family home were all exposed. Every dollar of retained profit sat in his personal balance sheet, taxed at 47%.
The work: Redesigned the group in three stages as the business scaled. Stage 1: moved trading into a discretionary family trust, asset protection restored, profits split between Jack and Diane. Stage 2: interposed a Pty Ltd operating company under the trust, 25%–30% corporate tax rate, limited-liability firewall between the business and the family. Stage 3: split out an asset company holding the trucks and equipment, and moved the commercial premises into a self-managed super fund with a limited-recourse borrowing arrangement, then rented it back to the trading business. Later added a holding company on top so two key operations managers could take equity through a single share class.
The trading business now runs behind a layered structure that quietly does its job. The next generation (Jack and Diane's kids) can inherit the family trust as it stands, without the business having to be sold to fund the estate.
Every entity, shareholder, trust and loan account in your group on a single page. Most owners haven’t seen this before we draw it.
Written assessment against tax efficiency, asset protection and sale/succession readiness. Specific flags, ranked by dollar impact.
The proposed end-state group with the reasoning behind every entity. Includes ownership percentages, appointed roles, and the sequence of steps to get there.
The full tax, stamp duty and legal cost of restructuring, laid out step by step. Where rollover relief applies, we show the pre- and post-rollover tax positions.
Entity setup, trust deeds, share transfers, ATO and ASIC lodgements, Division 7A loan agreements, distribution minutes template. You end the engagement with a working structure, not a folder of recommendations.
A three-year forward model showing projected tax outcomes, cashflow to owners, and Division 7A minimum-repayment obligations under the new structure. The number you’d budget against and the KPIs to review every June.
Bring your current entity diagram (or we’ll sketch it on the call). 25 minutes. We’ll tell you whether the structure you’re in still fits, where it’s exposing you, and what a redesign would look like on the numbers. If nothing needs to change, we’ll say so.
Book a structuring review